Lots of people like the Oscars. They REALLY like the Oscars. If you’re the typical American woman and/or gay man, this is basically your Super Bowl, minus the cool commercials and John Madden. You go to the store the day before, stock up on drinks and food (chocolate) and turn on the TV at 3 p.m. to watch all the red carpet special. Because it really fucking matters what who everybody is wearing!
If you’re a straight male though, now is your chance to experience what it’s like for your wife/girlfriend/mistress when you spend a full 48 hours preparing for Super Bowl Sunday. For the real Oscars buff, it’s not enough to turn on ABC when the show starts and see who wins… it’s a whole ordeal.
As straight men, we could really care less about the Oscars. That’s why Botswana and I decided that we had to give our Oscars recap. Enjoy The Straight Man’s guide to the Oscars.
The Hosts
Bens: There are just way too many words wasted on the Oscar hosts. They announce them like three months beforehand. Everybody is writing things like “oh, he’ll be good, I’ll watch the Oscars because he’s so funny” etc. I don’t care. Really. I know they’re writing jokes beforehand, pre-approved by some Oscar committee to make sure the most bland, non-offensive material gets through. I mean, I turn on the T.V. and James Franco looks bored. As he should be, he’s a straight guy at the Oscars. Anne Hathaway looks good. She’s just all around hot. Did you see her in Havoc? She could host my Oscar any day.
Botswana: This was easily the biggest fuck-up of the Oscars. You don’t hire a stoned hipster actor to co-host the entire show with an equally annoying actress. You hire a comedian who can make fun of himself and make at least a little fun of Hollywood. Anne Hathaway and James Franco were just fucking painful to watch. Milton Berle’s ghost should haunt them with his giant ghost-cock for that abomination of a performance. Also, I have to disagree with Bens on the relative hotness of Anne Hathaway. She’s way too lily white for me. I need a bad bitch (cough Mila Kunis cough). Maybe next year the Academy will hire Nicki Minaj to host.
Best Supporting Actor
Bens: I like John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone. He’s a badass hillbilly. How awesome was he in Deadwood? Christian Bale though, won. Did he wear a wig, or get his hair pulled out for the role in The Fighter? Lots of men are follically-challenged. If he got his hair pulled out, just for the film, that’s a whole lot of dedication to the role! No wonder he won. He’s Batman.
Botswana: I’ve said it before… I’m a huge fan of Jeremy Renner. Is it gay to admit to being a fan of an actor? I think so. We shouldn’t be talking about this.
Bens: Its totally not gay to admit that you’re a fan of Jeremy Renner. Jude Law on the other hand …
Best Supporting Actress
Bens: Halie Steinfeld was awesome in True Grit. Did you know she’s like .50% Jewish, .13% Black .13% Fillipino and .25% White? She’s going to be HOT when she’s older too. She won’t get the award though cause she’s 14. Melissa Leo won. She was okay in the Fighter. You know its a boring night when she drops an F-bomb and that’s one of the highpoints of the Oscars.
Botswana: Halie Steinfeld’s future hotness is another subject we should NOT be talking about. Anyway, she was great in “True Grit,” which is a movie that made me want to hike into the woods wearing only a loin cloth and shoot a bear with a crossbow. It was that good. The scene where she outwits the horse trader is fucking sublime. Also, Melissa Leo acted like she had just munched down a handful of prescription pills when she got up on stage. What the fuck is wrong with Hollywood people?
Visual Effects
Ben: This is inherently a manly category. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law almost ruined it though. Dudes, get a hotel room, or go make out backstage! Inception won. As it should. Zero gravity kung-fu ALWAYS wins.
Botswana: There was one point when those two were facing other and standing like four inches apart. It made me uncomfortable. You can’t tell me RDJ has never once sucked a dick for coke money.
Editing
Bens: 127 hours should have won. Seriously, its a story about a guy and a rock. How do you make that interesting? Editing. The social Network actually won. The editing makes me feel twitchier than a two day coke bender with no valium or booze to come down with.
Botswana: I consider myself somewhat of a film buff (shout-out to my homey Bernardo Bertolucci) but I have exactly ZIPPY fucking clue what makes a film well-edited. Also, I wish I had ZIPPY fucking clue about Bens’ drug analogies. College, man.
Best Animated Feature
Bens: I’m glad Toy Story won. They should have a separate category for Pixar movies though: “movies that make me cry.” Did you see that film? Jesus, I cried like six times in it! (Straight guys DO cry in movies, well, sometimes. Pixar movies.)
Botswana: Toy Story? Do adults watch those movies? I had no idea. I will admit to crying during movies. For instance, when Jenny throws the rocks at the old shack in “Forrest Gump,” that shit gets me every time. I won’t admit to displaying actual emotions during real life, though, so don’t get any ideas.
Best Song
Bens: WTF? Florence and her machine sang for about 30 seconds and now Gwenneth Paltrow sings some country trash? I could make a joke about how she puts the cunt in Country, but I’ll save that for later. Oh yeah, but Randy fucking Newman wins. My Mom doesn’t even like him.
Botswana: At one point in the night I had to piss out those four Heinekens I drank and when I came back there was a performance from some kind of awful Broadway musical troupe or something. This made me want to stab a hobo. That whole Broadway Musical style of music is awful. I would rather listen to fucking Christopher Cross string arrangements (which we were subjected to at the very end of the evening). Then Gwyneth No-Ass Paltrow warbled her way through some goddamn cousin-fucker country-western bullshit. People have been killed for much less than this.
Remembering Dead Actors
Bens: The Oscars does this every year. I had to mute the Celine Dion song, but when Dennis Hopper and Leslie Nielsen came on, I started to tear up. For straight guys, their deaths was like a 1-2 punch to the heart. Remember kids, ‘if’ is the middle word in ‘Life’.
Botswana: Well I’ve always associated Celine Dion with death, so I considered that extremely apropos. (“Apropos” is way, way too French. I apologize.) I noticed that they stopped people from clapping for only the popular actors and dicking over everyone else. I loved that tradition. FUCK YOU, FILM EDITOR IRVING SCHLEINBAUM. I AM NOT OVERLY CONCERNED WITH YOUR DEATH.
Best Director
Bens: Why do they have 10 best pictures but 5 best directors? Darren Arnofsky or Joel and Ethan Cohen should have won. I’ll just pretend The King’s Speech doesn’t exist. I hope that one day Arnofsky gets an Oscar for “Pi” sort of like how Denzel Washington got an Oscar for “Training Day,” but really cause of his work in “Malcolm X.”
Botswana: I’m like the only person in America who sat through, “The Fountain,” so I’m fairly confident in saying Arnofsky is clinically fucking insane and should be recognized as some sort of legendary maniacal genius who drinks bat blood and frequents Haitian prostitutes.
Best Actress
Bens: Wow. This is a heated category. This is one of the most important categories for the straight man. Natalie Portman. Do I need to say more? Nicole Kidman is a good choice too. Jennifer Lawrence is hot too! (she’s younger than my sister though, so its kinda weird. Sort of like having sex in your parents bed.) Michelle Williams, eh. Yeah, Natalie Portman won. Did you see that movie? Sheesh. Its kind of disappointing that Mila Kunis didn’t win for best supporting actress. Oh well, I’ll chalk it up as a ‘win’ for both of them (and all straight men.) On a side note: Anne Hathaway in that shiny blue dress? She looks like an immaculate gift-wrapped present. I just to un-wrap her like so many Christmas presents of past.
Botswana: If Botswana Jr. (my penis) were giving out the awards, Mila Kunis would sweep. She has that bad-girl vibe that he ALWAYS goes for. Natalie Portman, even pregnant, is still pretty damn hot. I have to say, though, Nicole Kidman? At this point she looks like a malfunctioning robot. Also, this Jennifer Lawrence has a nice girl-next door thing going on, and she’s 21. You can’t make a Haley Seinfeld (or whatever her name is) comment and then say Jennifer Lawrence is off limits. I hope in her next role Jennifer shows off what’s on the balcony, if you know what I mean.
Best Actor
Bens: Jeff Bridges walked offstage after presenting Best Actress. Why? He won last year, so they’re totally going to snub him. How lame is Sandra Bullock: “your power is a spark that connects the social network” to Jesse Eisenberg? Colin Firth? Ok, that’s cool, I guess. (fucking readcoats.) It would be totally tacky for Jeff Bridges to win two years in a row. Its cool, Jeff Bridges doesn’t care if he gets another statue. Give him a bottle of scotch and let the limeys have a chance. No one cares about the BAFTAS anyways.
Botswana: Jeff Bridges should be allowed to do whatever he wants at this point. He should be allowed to bang Anne Hathaway while firing pistols in the air, Yosemite Sam-style. I don’t know what to say about Colin Firth other than that our American founding fathers Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Dale Earnhardt fought the British at Gettysburg SO THAT WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO FANCY-ASS LIMEYS LIKE COLIN FIRTH. Nowadays we’re giving them our best awards and letting them bang our Anne Hathaways. It’s madness.
Best Picture
Bens: Winter’s bone, True Grit, Black Swan, The Fighter, and Inception would be on the straight man’s Oscar list (we’re oldskool and only nominate 5. Toy Story 3 won best animated feature too. There’s no “Best non-animated feature” so we’ll exclude it.) At first you’d think that Black Swan would be the early favorite, due to the hot lesbian scenes between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman. However, it disappoints. See, as hot as it is on film, they’re not making out with ME. So I’d have to go with True Grit. For fuck’s sake, Rooster Cogburn goes against almost insurmountable odds in the backwoods of Oklahoma, drinkin’ and cussin’ the whole time. He cut a wound and sucked the snake venom out of it. It doesn’t get more manly than that. The King’s Speech won. Bleh. I would have accepted Inception, or Black Swan, or even The Fighter, but a fancypants British costume drama wins.
Botswana: I have to say, this year’s batch of films were incredibly goddamn manly. “True Grit,” “The Fighter,” “The Town,” “127 Hours.” It was a good year for fans of watching awful things to happen to male characters! And as I said before, Rooster Cogburn and the whole cast of “True Grit” were fantastic. I haven’t seen “Black Swan,” but I will now after reading Bens’ summary. As for “The King’s Speech,” if you told me to sit through a movie about a stuffy British man who overcomes his speech impediment, I would punch you in the dick.
The Finale
Bens: Hey James, if I were hanging out with Anne Hathaway during the show, I would have had an amazing night too! What’s with the crummy ‘entertainment’ they break for? “Somewhere over the rainbow” should be saved for elevator music, high school singing competitions, and gay pride festivals. I would have been happier if they busted out some Lady Gaga tune. Kids singing inappropriate-age songs! Classy. I’m also glad I don’t have to hear “The 83rd Academy Awards on ABC will return shortly” until next year.
Botswana: The finale music reminds of when my mother would take me to the grocery store as a little kid in like 1983 and they still played those awful Muzak string arrangement version of Rolling Stones songs. The Academy is just not very punk rock, I guess. Well anyway… that’s it for this year’s Oscars. Now it’s all over and we’re all just a little more gay for having experienced it.
OK, a lot more gay….
